Breast Cancer Prevention Fund Scam
A fairly regular visitor to inboxes around the world is an email that asks people to visit the Breast Cancer site and click on a button to help pay for mammograms for underprivileged women. Although the email has some of the characteristics of a hoax, the information it contains is true. The Breast Cancer site is real and money paid by site advertisers does indeed go towards providing free mammograms. This is a worthy cause and I would encourage readers who comes across one of these situations to go ahead and click on the fund free mammagrams button.
The breast cancer site is an online activism site that gives Internet users a free and easy way to help reduce the number of mothers, sisters, daughters and friends lost to breast cancer. In seconds, visitors to The Breast Cancer Site can click on the “Fund Free Mammograms” button and, at no cost to them, help fund a free mammogram for an underprivileged woman. Mammography is one the best-known methods of early detection of breast cancer, and early detection is the key to survival and better treatment options. Provision of free mammograms is carried out through the National Breast Cancer Foundation and paid for by The Breast Cancer Site’s sponsors. The Breast Cancer Site was founded on October 23, 2000.
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Before contributing to this charity again, I decided to get more information about them. Since they provide their tax returns online, this is easy to do. Their 2008 return shows that $2.3M of their $3.8M gross receipts was paid to their fundraiser, Legacy Corp. It further shows that Legacy Corp. is partly owned by BCPR Board President (and founder) James Paton. Their telephone pitch says that the money you contribute will go to provide mammograms for needy women. But only $550,000 was spent on mammograms, which amounts to 14.27% of gross receipts. Amazingly, when I checked BCPF’s rating in the Washington Sec’y of States database, I saw that the data it provided to the Sec’y of State indicates that it “devoted 93% of its total expenses to program services.” Perhaps this is because BCPF files its tax return in such a way that only $187K is listed in fundraising fees (Part I), and the 2.3M paid to their fundraiser, Legacy Corp., shows up as “Other Expenses.” So it appears that they have gamed the system in such a way that they pay 60% of their gross receipts to their fundraiser, and can still tell the Sec’y of State’s office that their fundraiser returns 93% to the charity.
Got this through a bit of research. Thought you might wanna know.